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  “Do you think I will?” Justin asked.

  “Will what?”

  “Go to hell.”

  “No,” Asher said instantly, forcibly. He knew that preachers just like him were the very ones who had put thoughts like this into his son’s mind, into the minds of all those children on the playground. He sat for a time, trying to gather more to say, but he was at a loss.

  Asher opened his door. He put his hand on Justin’s back as they walked up to the house. “We ought to go walking up on the ridge after supper,” Asher said. “The foxgloves should be blooming by now.” These days the woods felt more and more like the only kind of church he wanted to be a part of.

  8

  When Stephen and Jimmy started coming to their church on Sunday mornings, three different members of the church’s board asked Asher what he was going to do about it.

  “I’m going to welcome them in,” Asher said. He didn’t say how badly he wished he could go back to the day he turned his brother away and make that right. He wanted to, though.

  Then more of the congregation called him, and some showed up at his house saying, We can’t have that kind of thing going on in our church or I can’t let my children be around such as that and You know what they are or You have to do something, Pastor Sharp.

  Caleb Carey was the loudest voice against them. He demanded they be told to not come back.

  “I can’t do that, Caleb,” Asher said. “I won’t tell anyone they’re not welcome here.”

  “There’s churches in Nashville that accept their kind,” Caleb said. “Let ’em go there.”

  “I told you, I won’t turn anybody away from worshipping.”

  “I’ll call a special meeting of the other deacons if I have to,” Caleb said. He had once been a man of such humility and now there was anger tight in his shoulders, an aggression in the cords of his neck. He had lost nearly everything in the waters twice now and it had taken more than his wife and house. “If you don’t run them queers off, then I will.”

  “Nobody’s running anyone off from this church, now, Caleb.” He rose then. He couldn’t sit still when he was so angry. “One of those men saved you, Caleb. Saved Rosalee.”

  “That doesn’t make it right, what they are. We can’t condone that, Asher.” Caleb wiped sweat from his brow and looked away. Then his anger gathered again. “Next they’ll be wanting you to preach their wedding. What will you do then?”

  “Caleb, I know you’re mad. And I don’t blame you. You lost so much.” Asher stopped, struggling for the right words. “But treating them bad won’t make you feel any better.”

  “I’m not going to be like everybody else in this country and give up my beliefs to be polite.”

  “Don’t let this turn you mean.”

  Caleb shook his head. “What’s happened to you, Asher Sharp?” He left Asher’s office door wide open.

  “What are you thinking, Asher?” Lydia said after she took her first drink of coffee. “You want to lose your church?”

  “What are you thinking?”

  She snorted. “What are you talking about?”

  “I know you’ve been taking Justin to a therapist. Why would you do that, then tell him to not tell me?”

  “I thought it would help things,” she said, her face suddenly red. “If he wasn’t so wrought up all the time.”

  “Justin’s not the problem,” Asher said, keeping his words small and even. “This world is. Nobody can just let a person be.”

  Lydia fell silent.

  “I want to talk to this therapist,” he said, thinking of the pills doctors gave to boys like Justin. He would not have the shine rubbed out of his son.

  “It’s not normal, to be so tenderhearted,” she said, standing now, the sun shining so brightly through the kitchen window behind her that her face was lost to him. “How can a person get through their day when they worry about every little thing in the world? He can’t walk across the yard without worrying about hurting an ant, Asher! He’s got to quit feeling so much.”

  “Why should he?” Asher thundered.

  Lydia dashed the last of her coffee out into the sink and washed the mug with her back to him.

  “I know you think you’re protecting him,” he said. “But I want him left alone.”

  As they drove to Nashville Lydia flicked on the radio and tuned the knob to a gospel station out of the eastern mountains. They listened only for an excruciating moment to a preacher screaming about how the Christian flag would be banned next before Asher snapped it off. Lydia sighed and pulled a CD mix of gospel songs from the console and slid it into the player.

  Justin nudged white earbuds into his ears.

  “What do you listen to on there all the time?” she asked, turning in her seat.

  “My Morning Jacket, mostly.”

  “What’s that?”

  Justin tugged at the white cord, popping out one of the earbuds. “Just a band,” he said.

  “What kind of band?”

  “My favorite band. Jim James is the lead singer and he—”

  “They better not be cussing and going on,” she said, eyeing him.

  “They’re not like that,” Asher said.

  “Why do you like them?” Now she spoke toward the wind­shield.

  “I just like the way they sound. Listening to them makes me feel the way you feel when you’re at church.”

  To Asher’s surprise she laughed. “I doubt that,” she said.

  Justin put the earbuds back in and turned his music up, leaning his head back on the seat.

  And then there was Nashville spread out in front of them with its stadium and the Batman Building and the kind of white haze that always stood between it and the rest of the world once warm weather set in. But they weren’t going downtown. One exit, then one street and another and then they were in a brick box of a building. A young pretty girl who talked like a baby showed them into a room that looked like somewhere to sit and watch TV instead of talk to a doctor. Except there was no TV. Just a couch and two chairs and a coffee table with nothing but a grayish-pink box of Kleenex. The window looked out over the parking lot. Asher could see their car down there, baking in the summertime. There was a plastic ivy plant on the windowsill, in the sun, which troubled him. A fake plant sitting in the light. Asher imagined the leaves were very warm.

  Asher hated all of this. The featureless room and the silence and the sickening scent of a vanilla deodorizer plugged into an outlet.

  The therapist came in and leaned over to shake Justin’s hand like they were partners in crime. Then she said hello to Lydia as if they were old friends and turned to Asher as if only now realizing he was there, saying he should call her Leslie. Her teeth were very, very white. Leslie sat and crossed her legs, her stockings scratching together, then balanced a notepad atop her leg.

  “Now Justin, we’re going to talk for just a minute with your mama and daddy here and then you and I will speak alone. Will that be okay?”

  “Yeah, but I don’t call her ‘Mama,’ ” Justin said, as if he had explained this before and was exhausted by repeating it. “I call her ‘Mom.’ ”

  “Oh, that’s okay.” Leslie laughed like there was some reason that wouldn’t be okay and wrote something down on the notepad. To Asher she seemed like a blank piece of paper and he had to chastise himself to keep from disliking her just because he had been left out of all of this by Lydia.

  Lydia began to talk, saying lots of things about Justin as if he wasn’t sitting right there: “He’s such a good boy, we’re very proud of him but he still gets real upset if somebody or something is hurt even though I tell him that’s part of life, that’s just the way it is, and he can’t stand it if somebody is crying or upset. And I know you all talked about it but he still just has to touch everything.”

  Justin was feeling the warm leaves of the fake plant in the window and seemed to not hear a word of this. Asher was surprised that this kind of conversation would happen in front of the boy. Le
slie was scrawling across her notepad and looked up at Lydia as if enthralled.

  “He stays sick all the time because of it, always a runny nose or a cough or stomach virus,” Lydia continued. Asher thought she’d never hush. “And there’s a boy who’s been picking on him at school. Today we just want to bring his daddy into the conversation.”

  Leslie stood and motioned Justin into another room for his private therapy. “I’ll call y’all in before too long!” she said, as if all of this was meant to be great fun.

  He stared at Lydia and he hoped that she could read his mind because he was thinking how he wasn’t sure if he could ever get over her doing this behind his back.

  The therapist said Justin had an anxiety disorder. “G-A-D, I’m thinking, or Anxiety Disorder N-O-S,” she said, looking them in the eye, acting like everybody living in this world ought to know what all those initials stood for. “Since this is our third time together I think I’m going to refer him to a psychiatrist and I’m betting they’ll start him on an anxiolytic med, or an S-S-R-I—”

  “Wait a minute now,” Asher told her, holding up his hand. “What if he’s just good to the bone? Maybe he’s just a good little boy.”

  The woman leaned forward and tented her fingers. “You are extremely fortunate to have been blessed with this good little soul,” she said, and Asher knew she was believing every word she was about to say. “Really. I’ve seen children like this before, and they are wonderful. But you have to remember that it makes a hard life for him, carrying all these burdens on his little shoulders. I have no desire to change who Justin is, and neither will Dr. Conley. But I think he will agree with me that we can make his life a little more manageable.”

  “But he’s not unmanageable,” Asher said.

  “Asher, just let her explain,” Lydia said, and put her hand on his thigh.

  “Mr. Sharp, I don’t think you’re aware of how stressful everyday life is for Justin. He worries about everything. He worries about being different from other kids. He worries that his grandmother might die in the night because she’s old. He worries about the dog that was lost in the flood—”

  “All those things sound like reasonable things to worry about to me, things any kid might—”

  “Yes,” Leslie said, smiling as if she was interrupting a child who was delighting her. “Of course. But the difference is that these things have such a tremendous impact on Justin that I’m afraid he might develop ulcers or other physical manifestations. We have to treat him properly.”

  “There’s no way you’re putting my boy on pills,” he said, and stood.

  “Well, that’s not up to me anyway, Asher. That’ll be up to the psychiatrist,” Leslie said, and he felt like demanding that she not call him by his first name. He hated how familiar perfect strangers were these days. But he remained silent.

  And so here was another reason to stay: to not uproot everything his son had ever known, to protect Justin.

  9

  The next Sunday, the two men came to church again and everyone turned in the creaky pews to watch them walk down the aisle. The men sat about halfway back and when they did the family sitting on the other end of the pew made a big commotion of getting up and moving to the front row. Jimmy nodded his head in greeting but only a couple people acknowledged him. Stephen kept his eyes on the floor.

  Surely the men knew how these people felt about them. But maybe, Asher thought, that was why they came. Maybe they wanted to test this place and see what would happen.

  Asher couldn’t blame them for that.

  He had a sermon prepared on the rocks of the Israelites but now another idea came to him. It was easy to discount people when you didn’t know them or couldn’t see them. But here these men were, right in front of them, their faces full of expectation. Maybe they weren’t trying to test anyone; maybe they wanted to worship with a congregation. He remembered the tender way Jimmy had kissed Stephen’s eyelids during the flood. His forehead. His mouth. Asher realized that he was standing there in silence, watching them while everyone else watched him. He had to say something.

  So he turned to Hebrews 13:2 – 3: Be not forgetful to entertain strangers: for thereby some have entertained angels unawares. Remember them that are in bonds, as bound with them; and them which suffer adversity, as being yourselves also in the body. Then he quoted Matthew 25:35: For I was hungered, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in. He flipped to Romans 12:13, and read: Distributing to the necessity of saints; given to hospitality.

  “This is what we have to do: be good to each other. If someone is different from you, get to know them instead of turning your back on them. For years I’ve preached to you that you should judge others, and lead them to change their ways. But I’ve changed my way of thinking. What I’m telling you right now is that the only one who can judge any of us is God above.” Electricity ran up the backs of his arms, causing him to shiver as if he were about to speak in tongues.

  He waited for someone to join in. This was a congregation that liked to participate, shouting “Amen!” or “Hallelujah!” to punctuate the rhythm of the sermon, but today they all sat silent.

  Asher caught sight of Justin, who was leaning in close to Zelda. He was doing this for him, to show him that church didn’t have to dim the God in people, that it could do the opposite.

  Lydia sat on the other side of Justin, nearby yet apart. Her arms were folded and she shook her head just enough for Asher to notice, trying to protect him.

  “All my life I’ve been told to love the sinner and hate the sin. But I’m telling you it’s not my place to say that other people who aren’t hurting anyone are committing a sin. I’m telling you what John said to us in the Scripture: ‘Thou doest faithfully whatsoever thou doest to the brethren, and to strangers.’ Do you know what this verse is saying to us?”

  He took a deep breath as he waited for a response from the congregation. There was none. He saw all their faces like snapshots being thrown down on a table in front of him.

  “It means you’re pleasing God when you are good to strangers. That’s our charge.” He paused, hearing the quiet. Since no one else would say it, he offered a quiet “Amen.”

  The choir hesitated before rising. Asher turned to them and threw his arms wide. “Sing ‘This Little Light of Mine’ for us, will you?”

  Asher sang along with the choir, who were doing a pretty feeble job although they usually had the Power all over them. The congregation always stood and sang along, too, but they didn’t today. Asher scanned their faces. He didn’t care if he had their approval and didn’t want to appear as if he did.

  As the choir finished he walked to the back of the church where the double doors led outside, just as he always did.

  “Lord,” he said at the door, “help us to love one another as you have loved us, without question, without judgment, without persecution. Amen.”

  All at once everyone was on their feet and shuffling out as if carrying heavy loads. At the door some of them shook his hand, but others filed past. They already knew what they were going to do and they would offer him no Judas kiss.

  Some who paused to shake Asher’s hand goodbye looked sad. He had hurt them. He hadn’t wanted to. Others looked troubled because they knew what would happen. They all knew this would be the last of his preaching here, for defying the church. Only Kathi Hoskins hugged him. “Thank you,” she said.

  Lydia and Zelda slid past but Justin broke through, pushing past the legs of folks until he reached his father.

  Jimmy and Stephen had waited to be last.

  Jimmy shook Asher’s hand, holding on to it tightly. “We didn’t want to cause you any trouble,” he said. “We just thought that it might be safe to come here because we could tell you were a good man, even if your wife didn’t want us about. And so we thought—”

  “I’m ashamed of how they acted,” Asher said.

  “Hey there,” Jimmy said, looking down. “Here�
�s the little man that led us out of the wilderness.”

  “Hidy,” Justin said, then scrambled down the steps to the car.

  “That was a brave thing you just did,” Jimmy said. “We should’ve never moved out here and thought it would be any different. We’ve been living in a motor home, trying to rebuild.”

  “We’re not about to let anybody run us off,” Stephen said.

  Jimmy looked so tired, like he had been fighting all his life. The grief had cut his face with deep furrows around his mouth and across his forehead, but his eyes shone out from the hurt. Asher thought of Luke and wondered if the troubles of his last few years showed on his face like this, too, knowing he had put some of those marks on his brother’s skin.

  “I wish things were different,” Asher said.

  Jimmy nodded. He glanced at Stephen. “I know this is asking a lot, Pastor Sharp. But we wondered if—not right now, but sometime in the future—you’d consider marrying us. Maybe next year, once we get our house built.” Jimmy was twisting a baseball cap between both hands. “It’d mean a lot to me, personally, to have a preacher do it, and you’re the only one I ever knew of to stand up for us, to really put it on the line like that.”

  Asher had always heard about people breaking into cold sweats and now he knew it was true. Suddenly his body felt drenched.

  “We’d want it out at our house,” Jimmy added. “Not here at the church. Just us.”

  He saw the faces of his congregation, of Lydia, of Caleb Carey. He was beyond caring what any of them thought. But still, years and years of believing one way was hard to let go of completely.

  “I don’t know, to tell you the truth,” Asher said, and he heard his voice trembling, “I’d have to think about it.”

  “Never mind,” Stephen said. “Let’s go, Jimmy.”

  “Wait, now.” Jimmy caught Stephen by the wrist. “Just be patient a minute.”

  Stephen turned and shoved his hands into his pants pockets. “We’ve been patient our whole lives.”